Westwater Announces Exploration Plan to Confirm Vanadium Discovery
Date: Apr 10, 2019
Exploration on Five New High-Quality Vanadium Targets Identified as a Result of Recently Completed Re-Sampling Program
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Westwater Resources, Inc. (“Westwater,” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: WWR), an energy materials development company, is pleased to announce a new drilling and sampling exploration plan to explore for and define vanadium resources on five target areas at its Coosa Project in Alabama. The Company believes that this exploration plan could advance and enhance the evaluation of its existing graphite resource, including the possibility for an extension of that mineralization. The Company anticipates posting a Technical Report summarizing the vanadium exploration plan on the WWR website in May 2019.
Management Commentary
Christopher M. Jones, President and CEO of Westwater Resources, stated, “This new exploration plan follows up our announcement earlier this year of a vanadium discovery on the Coosa Project. With vanadium prices at $15/lb. and strong steel markets to support these high prices, we believe that this new exploration plan could make a fundamentally positive change in our Coosa Project value proposition.
“The vanadium discovery compliments our strong asset portfolio and upside potential as demand fundamentals for vanadium, graphite and lithium continue to improve. As a reminder, while the Company develops its mining plans with a longer-term view, we believe that our graphite business is likely to generate revenue in 2020 and should become cashflow positive by 2021. This approach should make it possible for Westwater to develop the Coosa Project beyond the initial startup using the cash flows it generates. As a result, we believe that we can reinvest and grow the business to a 15,000 ton per year graphite business in just a couple of years, while we are building out the Coosa mine.
“The vanadium deposit was an unexpected and significant find for our company. The progress we have made so far, coupled with the new exploration plan, leads us to believe that vanadium could greatly enhance the asset value of Westwater Resources. As we continue to complete our reclamation activities with our uranium projects and move forward with lithium, graphite and vanadium, we believe these complementary energy materials should significantly increase shareholder value.
“We remain highly optimistic about our current materials base and we look forward to the potential of adding vanadium to our portfolio with the new exploration plan,” concluded Mr. Jones.
